Shirtless man with a black NY cap covering his face, showing traditional rose and heart tattoos and lettering across his chest, arms and abdomen.

Heavily tattooed torso and arms under a cap

Traditional · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A shirtless man wearing a black NY cap pulled down over his face holds the brim with both hands. His chest, upper arms, forearms and lower abdomen are covered in tattoos, including red roses, a heart, a banner with the word MOTHER, and lettering such as VOID and DON'T LAUGH. The image is softly lit against a pale background, with black linework and red and grey shading on the roses and arm pieces.

Traditional Lettering Chest Upper arm Forearm Hand Other Rose Heart Banner Lettering Mother Cap Tree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Settle down, the lot of you, and hush, because I'll not tell this twice and the bride has been promised a true one. Forty year back, in the lane behind the Lamb and Flag, there was a widow called Mags Dunning who kept red roses in a tin bath under her back window. Her boy Tommy worked the docks and came home every night with his knuckles split and a few coins in his fist. He'd slap them on the table and say, that's for the roses, Mam, and she'd say, the roses don't need paying for, love. They need minding.

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One February the tin bath froze solid and the blooms went black at the edges. Tommy went down to the market with nothing but his cap and a borrowed needle, and came back with a pot of ink and a face like thunder. He'd sat in a cellar off Scotland Road while a man called Fergie drew a rose on his skin, a banner over it, and a heart with the word MOTHER set beneath like a promise nobody could quite read. Fergie wanted paying in whisky. Tommy paid him in shifts at the quayside, which is how half of Wigan ended up owing Fergie a favour.

The foreman, who fancied himself a poet, once scratched VOID across the back of his hand in biro and swore it meant freedom. Mags laughed so hard she had to sit on the step, and Tommy wrote DON'T LAUGH underneath in the same ink, so she'd never forget the day.

When Mags died, the bath was still on the back step, and in spring a single green stick poked up out of the soil where the roses had been. Tommy said nothing. He just tied it to the drainpipe with twine. Now, whenever the bloom comes in, you'll see it climbing the bricks, because she always said a rose needs something to hold on to. Now lift your glasses and drink to the bride.